41 highly-anticipated graphic novels for fall 2019

In spite of everything, 2019 has been a damn good year for comics. Heading into the final few months of the year, we’ve rounded up 41 highly-anticipated graphic novels for fall 2019 (September-November), including all-ages books, history comics, graphic memoirs, horror stories, advice for making comics, and more.

Without further ado, here are 41 new and upcoming releases to check out.

Grease Bats

Cartoonist: Archie Bongiovanni
Publisher: BOOM! Box
Release Date: Aug. 28 (Comic Shops), Sept. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99

So, no one told you life was gonna be this gay! Grease Bats stars Andy, a trans genderqueer individual who is both tough and loving, and their BFF Scout, an all-feelings-all-the-time mistake-maker. … Along with their friends and plenty of beer, they’re just trying to make it through their 20s, survive late capitalism, and navigate the dating world. 

Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass

Writer: Mariko Tamaki
Artist: Steve Pugh
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
Publisher: DC Ink
Release Date: Aug. 28 (Comic Shops), Sept. 3 (Bookstores)
List Price: $16.99

With just five dollars and a knapsack to her name, 15 year-old Harleen Quinzel is sent to live in Gotham City. … When Gotham’s finest drag queen, Mama, takes her in, it seems like Harley has finally found a place to grow into her most “true true” with new best friend Ivy at Gotham High. But when Mama’s drag cabaret becomes the next victim in the wave of gentrification that’s taking over the neighborhood, Harley gets mad. She decides to turn her anger into action and is faced with two choices: join activist Ivy, who’s campaigning to make the neighborhood a better place to live, or join her anarchist friend Joker, who plans to take down Gotham one corporation at a time. 

Free S**t

Cartoonist: Charles Burns
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Release Date: Sept. 3
List Price: $19.99

Since 2000, cartoonist Charles Burns (Black Hole) has been self-publishing a secret sketchbook zine that he gives out to friends and VIPs — dubbed “Free Shit.” Burns has now compiled all 25 issues into a single volume for all of his fans to enjoy. Featuring finished drawings, rough sketches, process pieces, and more, the book is a window into the artist’s id as well as a revealing behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of his grotesque and engrossing characters and motifs.

Are You Listening?

Cartoonist: Tillie Walden
Publisher: First Second
Release Date: Sept. 10
List Price: $17.99

Bea is on the run. And then, she runs into Lou. This chance encounter sends them on a journey through West Texas, where strange things follow them wherever they go. The landscape morphs into an unsettling world, a mysterious cat joins them, and they are haunted by a group of threatening men. To stay safe, Bea and Lou must trust each other as they are driven to confront buried truths. The two women share their stories of loss and heartbreak—and a startling revelation about sexual assault—culminating in an exquisite example of human connection.

Hardcore Anxiety: A Graphic Guide to Punk Rock and Mental Health

Cartoonist: Reid Chancellor
Publisher: Microcosm Publishing
Release Date: Sept. 10
List Price: $14.95

Punk rock and mental health have been intertwined since the very beginning. Nervous breakdowns, anxiety, seeking acceptance, attempting to overcome internalized demons, and reacting to harmful and oppressive systems—punk rock embodies and emboldens all our feelings and experiences, positive and negative. Hardcore Anxiety charts and tracks punk movements from the 70s till today, from small towns to stadiums, from the struggles in our heads to the people actively harming us in our communities. Told from the point of view of a young man discovering punk and working through mental illness in Evansville, Indiana, this stunning nonfiction graphic novel gives punks the most important advice of all: “You aren’t alone. You’re going to make it through alive.”

Stargazing

Cartoonist: Jen Wang
Publisher: First Second
Release Date: Sept. 10
List Price: $12.99

Following on the heels of her multi-award-winning graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker, Jen Wang returns with Stargazing, a middle-grade graphic novel about two unlikely friends who bond in spite of their differences. When Moon and Christine become neighbors, they quickly become BFFs, with Moon even revealing that she sometimes has visions of celestial beings — but when the all-too-Earthly root of these visions lands Moon in the hospital, Christine has to navigate being her friend even when the sky is falling, and not just when they’re sharing music and painting their toenails in the absence of Christine’s strict parents.

Stunt

Cartoonist: Michael Deforge
Publisher: Koyama Press
Release Date: Sept. 10
List Price: $15.00

Bloodlust & Bonnets

Cartoonist: Emily McGovern
Publisher: Andrews McMeel
Release Date: Sept. 17
List Price: $19.99

Lady Violet Travesty, the leader of a local vampire cult, is very intrigued by unworldly debutante Lucy. However, before Lucy can go galavanting off to a life of vampiric debauchery, she’s unexpectedly thrown together with the flamboyant poet Lord Byron and a bounty-hunter named Sham. The trio make their way across 19th-century Britain together, desperately trying not to reveal their feelings to each other, even as they flirt and fight and disrupt society balls — you know, the usual.

Cats of the Louvre

Cartoonist: Taiyo Matsumoto
Translator: Michael Arias
Publisher: Viz Media LLC
Release Date: Sept. 17
List Price: $29.99

The world-renowned Louvre museum in Paris contains more than just the most famous works of art in history. At night, within its darkened galleries, an unseen and surreal world comes alive—a world witnessed only by the small family of cats that lives in the attic. Until now…

Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival

Editor: Diane Noomin
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Release Date: Sept. 17
List Price: $29.99

Inspired by the global #MeToo Movement, Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survivalis a collection of original, nonfiction comics drawn by more than 60 female cartoonists from around the world. Featuring such noted creators as Emil Ferris, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, MariNaomi, Liana Finck, and Ebony Flowers the anthology’s contributors comprise a diverse group of many ages, sexual orientations, and races—and their personal stories convey the wide spectrum of sexual harassment and abuse that is still all too commonplace. With a percentage of profits going to RAINN, Drawing Power is an anthology that stokes the fires of progressive social upheaval, in the fight for a better, safer world.

For a full list of contributors, click here.

Guts

Cartoonist: Raina Telgemeier
Publisher: Scholastic Graphix
Release Date: Sept. 17
List Price: $12.99

Pittsburgh

Cartoonist: Frank Santoro
Publisher: New York Review Comics
Release Date: Sept. 17
List Price: $29.95

Pittsburgh is the story of a family, and a city. Frank Santoro faces a straightforward yet heart-rending reality: His parents, once high-school sweethearts, now never speak to each other—despite working in the same building. Stuck in the middle, he tries to understand. The result is this book.

The Tea Dragon Festival

Cartoonist: Katie O’Neill
Publisher: Oni Press
Release Date: Sept. 17
List Price: $21.99

Rinn has grown up with the Tea Dragons that inhabit their village, but stumbling across a real dragon turns out to be a different matter entirely! Aedhan is a young dragon who was appointed to protect the village but fell asleep in the forest eighty years ago. With the aid of Rinn’s adventuring uncle Erik and his partner Hesekiel, they investigate the mystery of his enchanted sleep, but Rinn’s real challenge is to help Aedhan come to terms with feeling that he cannot get back the time he has lost.

The Man Who Came Down the Attic Stairs

Cartoonist: Celine Loup
Publisher: Archaia
Release Date: Sept. 18 (Comic Shops), Sept. 24 (Bookstores)
List Price: $14.99

Emma is excited to start a family in her new home, but after her child’s birth she finds her world turning upside-down. The infant cries like it’s scared of something, or someone, and Emma’s sleepless nights quickly drive a wedge between her and her husband, who seems uncharacteristically detached. When Emma begins to see strange things in the house, the line between reality and fantasy blurs and her grasp of what’s real and what’s not becomes even more clouded. Is something unnatural haunting the nursery? And what if it also affected her husband, who ventured up into the attic when they first arrived…

Excuse Me: Cartoons, Complaints, and Notes to Self

Cartoonist: Liana Finck
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: Sept. 24
List Price: $20.00

Excuse Me assembles more than 500 of Liana Finck‘s most loved cartoons from Instagram and The New Yorker over the past few years, in such distinctive chapters as: Love & Dating; Gender & Other Politics; Animals; Art & Myth-Making; Humanity; Time, Space, and How to Navigate Them; Strangeness, Shyness, Sadness; and Notes to Self.

Frogcatchers

Cartoonist: Jeff Lemire
Publisher: Gallery 13
Release Date: Sept. 24
List Price: $22.99

A man wakes up alone in a strange room with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. The padlocked doors and barren lobby reinforce the strangeness of this place. This is—as he reads from an old-fashioned keychain beside his bed—the Edgewater Hotel. Even worse, something ominous seems to be lurking in one of the rooms. But when he meets a young companion—the only other soul in this vast, enveloping emptiness—his new friend begs him not to unlock the door. There must be something behind it…but what?

The River at Night

Cartoonist: Kevin Huizenga
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Release Date: Sept. 24
List Price: $34.95

In The River at Night, Kevin Huizenga delves deep into consciousness. What begins as a simple, distracted conversation between husband and wife, Glenn and Wendy Ganges—him reading a library book and her working on her computer—becomes an exploration of being and the passage of time. As they head to bed, Wendy exhausted by a fussy editor and Glenn energized by his reading and no small amount of caffeine, the story begins to fracture.

Rusty Brown

Cartoonist: Chris Ware
Publisher: Pantheon Graphic Library
Release Date: Sept. 24
List Price: $35.00

Rusty Brown is a fully interactive, full-color articulation of the time-space interrelationships of three complete consciousnesses in the first half of a single midwestern American day and the tiny piece of human grit about which they involuntarily orbit. … From childhood to old age, no frozen plotline is left unthawed in the entangled stories of a child who awakens without superpowers, a teen who matures into a paternal despot, a father who stores his emotional regrets on the surface of Mars and a late-middle-aged woman who seeks the love of only one other person on planet Earth.

Twice Shy

Cartoonist: Joel Orff
Publisher: Alternative Comics
Release Date: Sept. 24
List Price: $14.99

Twice Shy tells the story of two strangers who have shut themselves down emotionally as a way to cope with their lives. Bob is an artist with a creative block who loses himself in an aimless existence; while Casey suffers from deep-seated anxiety and feelings of abandonment. Brought together through an unexpected circumstance, they begin to open up and trust each other, gradually finding that their fears of being hurt are overcome by the simple joys that they now share. As they tentatively try to build a life together, the harsh realities of the outside world begin to intrude on their happiness, but the experience changes them both in fundamental ways.

Batman: Nightwalker

Writer: Marie Lu
Adaptor: Stuart Moore
Illustrator: Chris Wildgoose
Publisher: DC Ink
Release Date: Sept. 25 (Comic Shops), Oct. 1 (Bookstores)
List Price: $16.99

A new ruthless gang of criminals known only as Nightwalkers are terrorizing Gotham and the city’s elite are being taken out one by one. On the way home from his eighteenth birthday party, newly-minted billionaire Bruce Wayne makes an impulsive choice that puts him in their crosshairs and lands him in Arkham Asylum, the once infamous psychiatric hospital. There, he meets Madeleine Wallace, a brilliant killer…and Bruce’s only hope. Madeleine is the mystery Bruce must unravel, but is he convincing her to divulge her secrets, or is he feeding her the information she needs to bring Gotham City to its knees?

Nancy

Cartoonist: Olivia Jaimes
Publisher: Andrew McMeel Publishing
Release Date: Oct. 1
List Price: $14.99

In 2018, Olivia Jaimes became the first woman to write and illustrate the classic comic strip Nancy. Her fresh, irreverent take on the classic comic strip has become a sensation with readers and has earned praise from dozens of media outlets, several of which have named it the best comic of the year. This hardcover collection includes the first nine months of Jaimes’ run on Nancy, along with an introduction, essay, interview with the author, and a special gallery of Nancy fan art by the author. 

Qualification: A Graphic Memoir in Twelve Steps

Cartoonist: David Heatley
Publisher: Pantheon Graphic Library
Release Date: Oct. 1
List Price: $26.95

From the author of My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down, a new graphic memoir brimming with black humor, which explores the ultimate irony: the author’s addiction to 12-Step programs.

Bury the Lede

Writer: Gaby Dunn
Artist: Claire Roe
Colorist: Miguel Muerto
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Release Date: Oct. 2 (Comic Shops), Oct. 9 (Bookstores)
List Price: $19.99

When cub reporter Madison Jackson races to the scene of a brutal murder tied to a prominent Boston family, hoping for a scoop, she finds celebrity socialite Dahlia Kennedy covered in blood. Now the prime suspect in the murders of her husband and child, Dahlia refuses to speak to anyone but Madison — thus ensuing a dangerous game of cat and mouse. Check out a preview here.

Mooncakes

Writer: Suzanne Walker
Artist: Wendy Xu
Letterer: Joamette Gil
Publisher: Lion Forge
Release Date: Oct. 2 (Comic Shops), Oct. 15 (Bookstores)
List Price: $14.99

Teenage witch Nova and her childhood crush/best friend, the genderqueer werewolf Tam, are reunited when dark forces release a giant horse demon in the woods of their hometown. Their latent feelings are rekindled amidst the chaos, in a magical tale of self-discovery and strength. You can read the full first chapter here.

Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame

Cartoonist: Erin Williams
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Release Date: Oct. 8
List Price: $24.99

This graphic memoir follows Erin Williams on her daily commute to and from work as she reflects on sexual encounters (both consenting and not), as well as her battle with alcoholism, addiction, and recovery. Williams examines objectification and the complexities of shame, guilt, and vulnerability.

Cosmoknights

Cartoonist: Hannah Templer
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions
Release Date: Oct. 22
List Price: $19.99

When Pan’s best friend Tara leaves their home planet to escape an archaic ritual in which mech knights fight each other in space arenas to marry princesses, it changes Pan’s world forever. Then a charismatic pair of off-world gladiators show up on her doorstep, and everything changes again. Together, they’ll take on the patriarchy in this neo-medieval world. You can also read Cosmoknights as a webcomic.

The Hard Tomorrow

Cartoonist: Eleanor Davis
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Release Date: Oct. 8
List Price: $24.95

Hannah is a thirty-something wife, home-health worker, and antiwar activist. Her husband, Johnny, is a stay-at-home pothead working—or “working”—on building them a house before the winter chill sets in. They’re currently living and screwing in the back of a truck, hoping for a pregnancy, which seems like it will never come. Legs in the air, for a better chance at conception, Hannah scans fertility Reddits while Johnny dreams about propagating plants—kale, tomatoes—to ensure they have sufficient sustenance should the end times come, which, given their fragile democracy strained under the weight of a carceral state and the risk of horrible war, doesn’t seem so far off. Helping Hannah in her fight for the future is her best friend Gabby, a queer naturalist she idolizes and who adores her. Helping Johnny build the house is Tyler, an off-the-grid conspiracy theorist driven sick by his own cloudy notions of reality.

Maria M.

Cartoonist: Gilbert Hernandez
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Release Date: Oct. 8
List Price: $29.99

This brutal, original crime thriller tells the story of femme fatale Maria M., whose life south of the border is a sordid tale of sex, drugs, violence, and power. When she comes to America for a better life, she marries a drug kingpin, whose son learns Maria’s darkest secret, leading to the most violent gangland bloodbath in organized crime history. Maria M. collects 2013’s Maria M. Book One (now out of print), and the never-before-published Book Two, presenting the complete graphic novel for the first time.

DC: Women of Action

Writer: Shea Fontana
Cover Artist: Jen Bartel
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Release Date: Oct. 22
List Price: $29.95

This illustrated collection features profiles some of the strongest women in DC Comics canon, as well as real-life women integral to their development, including Karen Berger and artist Ramona Fradon. DC: Women of Action also features exclusive art by Annie Wu, Brittney Williams, Colleen Doran, Elsa Chang, Emanuela Lupacchino, Gisele Lagace, Irene Koh, Jen Bartel, Jennifer Aberin Johnson, Little Corvus, Mingjue Helen Chen, Paulina Ganucheau, Stephanie Hans, and Winona Nelson.

Black Canary: Ignite

Writer: Meg Cabot
Artist: Cara McGee
Publisher: DC Ink
Release Date: Oct. 29
List Price: $9.99

Thirteen-year-old Dinah Lance knows exactly what she wants, who she is, and where she’s going. First, she’ll win the battle of the bands with her two best friends, then she’ll join the Gotham City Junior Police Academy so she can solve crimes just like her dad. Who knows, her rock-star group of friends may even save the world, but first they’ll need to agree on a band name. When a mysterious figure keeps getting in the way of Dinah’s goals and threatens her friends and family, she’ll learn more about herself, her mother’s secret past, and navigating the various power chords of life. 

Holy Hannah

Cartoonist: Will Dinski
Publisher: Uncivilized Books
Release Date: Oct. 29
List Price: $24.95

Hannah, a successful tech entrepreneur, decides to drop out of society and create a new social app, “Know Me.” She’s invited to test the app on a small religious community, the Church of Love and Devotion. The results go way beyond any intended consequences as lines separating the self, technology, and belief become blurred and lead to religious cult indoctrination. Loosely inspired by the life of the notorious Jim Jones and updated for the social media age, Holy Hannah explores family and the ways in which people’s lives become intertwined in unexpected and toxic ways.

The Banks

Writer: Roxane Gay
Artist: Ming Doyle
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Publisher: TKO Studios
Release Date: October 2019
List Price: $17.99

Three generations of women work together to pull off the heist of a lifetime, and avenge a life taken too soon.

Sentient

Writer: Jeff Lemire
Artist: Gabriel Walta
Letterer: Steve Wands
Publisher: TKO Studios
Release Date: October 2019
List Price: $17.99

When the adults aboard a colony ship are killed, it is up to VALERIE, the on-board AI, to help the ship’s children survive. 

Street Angel: Deadliest Girl Alive

Writers: Jim Rugg & Brian Maruca
Artist: Jim Rugg
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: Oct. 30 (Comic Shops), Nov. 5 (Bookstores
List Price: $19.99

Jesse “Street Angel” Sanchez is a homeless ninja girl on a skateboard In-between kicking ass and taking sandwiches — she fights bullies, street gangs, ninjas, the man, cocky superheroes, hunger, and the ninja industrial complex. She also rescues a stray dog, makes weird new friends, and saves Christmas? This collection includes all of Street Angel’s Image Comics adventures plus a couple of extra stories and behind-the-scenes materials. 

Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women’s Fight for Their Rights

Writer: Mikki Kendall
Artist: A. D’Amico
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Release Date: Nov. 5
List Price: $19.99

This graphic novel covers key figures and events that have advanced women’s rights from antiquity to the modern era. Additionally, Mikki Kendall and A. D’Amico spotlight notable women throughout history and the progressive movements led by women that have shaped history. These include queens and freedom fighters, the fight for LGBTQ liberation, abolition, civil rights, and more.

Heart of Darkness

Story: Joseph Conrad
Cartoonist: Peter Kuper
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Release Date: Nov. 5
List Price: $21.95

Peter Kuper adapts Joseph Conrad‘s classic novella about colonialism in Africa, looking at European racism of the time and inviting readers to grapple with the issues presented on their own terms.

Making Comics

Cartoonist: Lynda Barry
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Release Date: Nov. 5
List Price: $22.95

Making Comics is the follow-up to Barry’s bestselling Syllabus, and this time she shares all her comics-making exercises. In a new hand-drawn syllabus detailing her creative curriculum, Barry has students drawing themselves as monsters and superheroes, convincing students who think they can’t draw that they can, and, most important, encouraging them to understand that a daily journal can be anything so long as it is hand drawn.

Swimming in Darkness

Cartoonist: Lucas Harari
Translator: David Homel
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Release Date: Nov. 5
List Price: $24.95

Pierre is a young man at a crossroads. He drops out of architecture school and decides to travel to Vals in the Swiss Alps, home to a thermal springs complex located deep inside a mountain. The complex, designed by architect Peter Zumthor, had been the subject of Pierre’s thesis. The mountain holds many mysteries; it was said to have a mouth that periodically swallowed people up. Pierre, sketchbook in hand, is drawn to the enigmatic powers of the mountain and its springs, and attempts to uncover the truth behind them in the secret rooms he discovers deep within the complex. But he finds his match in a man named Valeret who is similarly obsessed, and who’d like nothing more than to eliminate his competitor.

November, Vol. 1

Writer: Matt Fraction
Artist: Elsa Charretier
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: Nov. 6 (Comic Shops), Nov. 12 (Bookstores)
List Price: $16.99

The lives of three women intersect in a dark criminal underground. As fire and violence tears through their city over the course of a single day and night, they find that their lives are bound together by one man—who seems to be the cause of it all. One night. One city. Three women. 

La Voz De M.A.Y.O.: Tata Rambo, Vol. 1

Writer: Henry Barajas
Artist: J. Gonzo
Letterer: Bernardo Brice
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: Nov. 13 (Comic Shops), Nov. 26 (Bookstores)
List Price: $16.99

La Voz De M.A.Y.O: TATA RAMBO is based on the oral history of Ramon Jaurigue, an orphan and WWII veteran who co-founded the Mexican, American, Yaqui, and Others (M.A.Y.O.) organization, which successfully lobbied the Tucson City Council to improve living and working conditions for members of the Pascua Yaqui tribe. Thanks to this period of activism, the Yaquis were federally recognized as one of the remaining Native American tribes. Meanwhile Ramon’s home life suffered as his focus was pulled from family to wider community, and from domesticity to the adrenaline of the campaign.

After the Spring: A Story of Tunisian Youth

Cartoonist: Helene Aldeguer
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Release Date: Nov. 19
List Price: $21.99

Two years after the “Jasmine Revolution,” Tunisia is unstable and facing economic hardship. Saif, Aziz, Meriem, and Chayma are among those who feel abandoned by the developing turmoil surrounding the government. Saif goes to college but worries about his younger brothers; Aziz struggles to find steady employment hoping to gain approval from Meriem’s family, while Meriem attends law school; and Chayma, after watching a man set himself on fire, considers emigration to France. As the situation becomes more serious and calls to activism in the streets get louder, each must consider what direction their future lies.